2011 Organizational Rankings: #18 – Oakland

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Yes, it’s a cliché, but statements often become clichés because they are grounded in truth. In the case of Oakland’s chain, the good things going in the organization only serve to cancel out the big glaring flaw – they just don’t have the kind of capital necessary to keep up with the big boys.

Present Talent: 77.50 (16th)

Athletics Team Preview

Future Talent: 75.00 (t-20th)

Athletics Top 10 Prospects

Financial Resources: 69.17 (28th)
Baseball Operations: 85.00 (6th)

Overall Rating: 76.50 (18th)

In the end, this ranking is all money. The A’s play in the worst stadium in baseball in the worst neighborhood for a stadium in baseball. For most teams, they can draw additional fans by winning games, creating a positive return on investment if they can put a good team together. The A’s? They won 102 and then 103 games in back-to-back seasons and attracted just 2.1 million fans in each year. When the team isn’t the best in baseball, that shrinks down to something more like 1.5 million. That they only have something in the range of 600,000 additional fans that can be convinced to come to the park when the team is super freaking good is an anchor holding them down.

If you’re owner Lew Wolff and you know that an additional $50 million in expenditures on player talent could lead to a nice bump in winning percentage, but that you’re barely going to sell another half million tickets, you would  need to generate $100 in profits (not just revenue, but profits) from each individual ticket sold in order for that to be a break-even proposition. The most expensive ticket the A’s sell is $75 – eyeballing the seating chart, the average looks to be around $35. Sure, you can gain incremental profit from selling those people hot dogs and beer, but unless you figure out how to attract a half million raging alcoholics with expense accounts, it would be a money-losing decision.

And so, the A’s are stuck. They generate enough revenue to give the front office enough money to keep afloat, but to actually win with any regularity, those guys have to spin yarn into gold. They were able to do it for a while, but they didn’t hold the patent on intelligent roster design, and now that the big boys are playing in the same sandbox, there’s not much room left for Billy Beane and company.

Even in years where they have money to spend (almost solely due to the fact that they didn’t have any highly paid players on the roster to begin with), they couldn’t get premium players to take their money, and instead had to turn their attention to trading for players who didn’t have a choice about whether they wanted to play in Oakland or not. You could certainly have a worse offseason than bringing in David DeJesus, Josh Willingham, and Hideki Matsui, but you could have a better one too – unless you’re running the A’s, at least. If you’re Oakland’s front office, that might be about as good as winter is ever going to get.

The lack of revenue gives the organization no margin for error. They have to hit on their draft picks and international signings. They have to keep their pitchers healthy. They have to lock up their internally developed stars at a young age and hope they don’t become old overnight. In a nutshell, they need to beat the odds with regularity, and unfortunately, that’s just an impossible assignment.

Even with all the respect we have for Billy Beane, David Forst, and the crew in Oakland, they’re running uphill in lead shoes. The league is getting smarter every season, and there simply aren’t enough “market inefficiencies” out there to make up for the fact that other smart teams have a payroll three times as large. The A’s can collect a whole roster of underrated quality performers, but then the Red Sox and Yankees roll into town with 15 guys Oakland can’t afford, and at the end of the day, the superior talent wins out.

Unless they move to a new stadium in a part of town that doesn’t scare away a lot of potential customers, the A’s are what they are – a well-run organization that makes enough good moves to be interesting but needs a few miracles in order to really contend for the title. In baseball, the A’s are the team bringing the proverbial knife to the gun fight. Their weak link is very weak, and it makes it tough for anything else they do to really make an impact.





Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

79 Comments
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Gumby
13 years ago

This is pretty true, but is that really all you can say about the entire franchise? Not a word about the team’s current offense paucities, defensive prowess, up-and-comers or apparent weakness of medium term prospects? A little disappointed….

Nate
13 years ago
Reply to  Gumby

I guess you have to include the disclaimer for every single team, Dave.

joe
13 years ago
Reply to  Nate

Yes, you should. If you are going to have serialized content that requires a disclaimer, it’s a poor usability decision to not include it on every article. People browse web *pages* and shouldn’t have to go to a separate document for necessary context to understand the page they are on.

Charlotte
13 years ago
Reply to  Gumby

We’re apparently going to have to say this on every page: the organizational rankings write-ups are just talking about finances and the front office, you can check the Team Preview for their current roster and Top Ten Prospects for the next generation.

Gumby
13 years ago
Reply to  Charlotte

Sorry for being ignorant: glad two of you took the time to blast me.

If this series is only about the front office and finances, why don’t you call it that? An “organization” is more than a front office, no?

Nate
13 years ago
Reply to  Charlotte

Gumby, the ranking includes all 4 factors, the details of the talent are the writeups that they’ve already done.

adohaj
13 years ago
Reply to  Charlotte

I don’t get what peoples issues are with the format of the articles the links for the other parts are right in the article

Brett Favre
13 years ago
Reply to  Gumby

Gumby, you need to stop talking bud. You don’t know anything bout baseball

Ben Hallmember
13 years ago
Reply to  Gumby

It probably isn’t a bad idea to include the disclaimer for each team. Annoying for those of us reading each one, but for someone like Gumby who’s not it would be very helpful. I don’t think his/her comment was that awful.